Nonsensicles

I started my reading of the BFSA Award nominees in the short story section. I chose to begin with Johnny and Emmie-Lou Get Married by Kim Lakin-Smith. It’s a quick read, so you might want to give it a perusal before continuing this post. I’ll endeavor not to reveal too much, but whenever you discuss someone’s work, spoilers are inevitable.

I’m not quite sure how to come at this story. I found it well fleshed-out, with the history and motivations of the characters well written and clear. In fact, I found the general tone and quality of the writing to be excellent, especially when she’s discussing the relationships between the characters. The dialogue is great and the lingo they use has a very ’50s flavor. Since I’m not as familiar with the terms of the time, I’m not sure whether she created her own style or borrowed it from the era, but it reads very clearly and instantly gives the characters an added depth.

Despite all that, I never quite felt fully sucked into the story. I found the descriptions to be a little too detailed. Although that’s mostly a stylistic quibble, I also found that the vehicle descriptions didn’t seem to quite fit with the tone of the story. They were also the only place where her actual sentences threw me, making go back and read again to make sure I understood. The ending also left me a little cold since it didn’t seem to flow naturally with the rest of the narrative.

I can see why this story was included in this list. It’s different – at least from what I’ve read – and has a compelling set of ideas. It’s not quite my cup of tea, but I’m sure a lot of people will devour something like this whole.

Okay. Hmm.

Wow.

So here I am blogging at long last. In lieu of any sort of preamble, I’ll just let you know what I’m thinking of doing here. I want to discuss writing and science fiction, politics and technology, life and family. Pretty much everything actually. But I’ll try to look at everything through the lens of that first item, writing and science fiction. I’ll include some of my own work to be read and judged as you see fit.

Since it so happens that the British Science Fiction Association has recently announced their award finalists, I thought I would set myself a mission of reading each and discussing the nominees here.

I haven’t read any of them yet, so all I can say is that I’m excited by the novelists. I’ve been a fan of China Mieville’s earlier work and have the greatest respect for Ursula Le Guin. I’ve found Stephen Baxter’s work dense and challenging, but I’m keen to see what he has to offer this time. All I’ve heard about Adam Roberts is that this novel is good, so I’m hoping he lives up to the hype.